AMERICA AN IMPORTER OF FOOD.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3147, 11 December 1922, Page 8

AMERICA AN IMPORTER OF FOOD.

Time was when the United States was the greatest granary of the world, when it had an enormous surplus of wheat for export to England 1 and Europe. Now it cannot grow little more than sufficient in a normal year for the requirements of its own people. But it is not in breadstuff's alone that the United States is compelled to look abroad for supplies. This change is in part the result of diminished production, but in the greater part it is the natural outcome of an enormous growth of population. In 1899 the total population of the United 1 States was about 75,000,000. By 1909 it had grown to about 91,000,000. In those ten years, while the population increased by about 21 |M?r cent., the're was an increase of only 1.7 per cent, in the production of the principal cereals. Now the population has grown to nearly 120,000,000. The position generally has aroused! serious attention in the country, and scientific analyses have been made by eminent authorities, including the painstaking members of the World Agricultural Society, of which the President of the Massachusettes Agricultural College is a member.

Mr .John Lathrop deals comprehensively with the subject in the New York Herald, and points out that the problem vitally concerns the millions of dwellers in the great cities of the United 1 States. He opens with the following statement of the position:— “In the fourteen years following 1900 the United States fell from the position of heaviest world exporter of foodstuffs to the necessity of buying, in 1912, 01,400,000 worth of edible articles of commerce more than it sold, and -ii 19N. even including the rush of the first war sales, Uncle Sam went down into his capacious pocket for £9,500,000 with which to pay for his excess of foodstuffs imports over foodstuffs export®. “Temporarily the war upset conditions. and by restriction of home consumption we sent abroad rather large food supplies. Hut now that the food situation approaches normality, this country will have, to face the disturbing fact that we may no longer look for tho large surplus of profit which wo formerly realised from the world foddstuffs traffic.

“Instead of compelling foreign nations to send us gold or goods to pay for their excess of food purchasers, the United States will have to ship gold or goods abroad to pay for its excess food purchasers over food exports, because the rapid ii icrea.se of population with virtually no increase of production is proceeding steadily and will intensify lather than relieve matters unless there be given national attention to several things which arc conditions precedent to solving the problem. There must be larger production per acre; elimination of waste in handling present production on the farms and vastly better handling of farm products in the process of distribution. Else, the pinch of food scarcity, which has been the basic consideration underneath practically all international complications abroad .will come upon the American people with relentless severity. “It used to be said that America, wasted enough food to feed Europe. Secretary Hoover of the United States Department of Commerce lately declared that “almost half of the perishable products of the farms never reach the markets;” and that' the prospect is that, in ten years the United States will have not a bushel of wheat for export.”

Next the writer shows how greatly the production of beef has fallen in proportion to population, the decline being equal to about two-fifths on a per capita basis. He also refers to a number of other products, and then turns to the question of productivity. Here is astonishing to learn how little the teaching of science has in practice done for the American farmers, though that country was generally believed to be ; n the van of agricultural progress and achievement. Says Mr Lathrop:—

“England raising 210 bushels of potatoes to the acre, and 1 Germany 200.7 on the average, while the United States ha® grown an average of only 91.1 bushels up to 1900 and 96.5 up to 1913. European wheat yields run, in 1 lie well-organised countries, normally twice as much a® iu the United States, with its marvellously rich, young and Ii road prairies and fertile valleys.”

Having dealt with the trek of millions westward across the prairies and through the valley, where the golden grain wealth lay waiting, the write' proceeds ; —'‘Meanwhile, American genius was perfecting mechanical devices for tin- sowing, ploughing and 1 reaping of grains. The Age of Steel was l beginning brilliantly, ami the utilisation of the products of this Age of Steel by the new western farmers was not loss brilliant, in so far as concerned the mere taking of the food values out front the richly endowed food lands. Mono thought of replenishing the soils. It was take, take, and) never give back, that there he permanency of the gram gold wealth. It was precisely that very going westwaid to take up new Hands 1 , virgin rich, in successive strips of area., which apparently lay at the. base of the niter failure of American agriculture to achieve genuine efficiency—hard 1 word perhaps, but cool truth. In other wordW. the era of the 1 perfection of agricultural machinery and tractors has not wrought out any actual efficiency in per acre increases of foodstuffs. Even these newer regions arc already in the dumps of non-efficient lowered yields to the aero, for by the census reports North Dakota, which only yesterday. speaking nationwide, was an nneon«|uered area of lands rich in natural foodstuffs values, produced 1 only 11(5,7S1.88(5 bushels of wheat in 1909 from S, 188,782 acres, or an average of only fourteen and a quarter bushels l , when North Dakota was booming, the average an acre being only about seven bushels in 1919.” 'lbis then has been taken up by a number of authorities, whose views l ought to command respect. I’rotessor E. M East of the Hussey Institute. Harvard Universitv. after dealing with

the subject in general terms, says;— “tVhat will happen when the new land gives nut? It is giving out —giving mil rapidly. Well, the result will ho simply this: The. machine farmer will give way to the hand larmcr. 1 he American will cultivate his land witlu more man power in his efforts ami approach the European standard of food production from a. given land area, lie will get greater yields on a given acre, even as the Khiropean farmer gets greater yields, hut the per capita will sink’, slowly downward.” Dr Frederick -I. Nash, fertilisation scientist, who has devoted Ids life to the study of foodstuff problems, writes very plainly upon the subject, and as what he says possesses significance and. value in this country wo make the following extracts from his contribution to (ho discussion ; “There must he attention to efficiency of iillage. uf farm handling, and of distribution: for in the first there is woeful lack of economic operation and adequate agricultural science; and in the other two occur wastes to cause the true economist to weep. “However, another element enters into the situation that will not he denied. And that is fertilisation of the. lands. We must put hack into the soils if wo are to take out from tlie soils.

We must replenish the lands with the food on which plant life subsists, and that we have not done at all adequately. I wish not to be over severe, but I venture the assertion that not on* person in twenty who has to do with tlie subject knows the scientific essence of tlic process of fertilising agricultural soils. As a people, wo shall have to leant how to fertilise, as the European people have been forced to learn it in (lie hard school of vast seeking to exist on restricted areas of farm lands. '■<

“Our era of restricted—relatively fit stricted —farm lands is at hand. It will lie the next phase of national economic study and improvement. The diy of easy food getting has passed. Hence, we shall have, as a people aim 1 as a. Government ,to go at this problem, and see to it, that the nation arouses to keen realisation of the economic and social gravity of the thing we face —a permanent pinch of food scarcity, with its consequent lowering of the standard of living, and the coincidental narrowing of the scope of national vision.”